Her sigh puffed out a little breath of condensation. She could handle this. With luck it would only be for an hour or two, then the power would be back on and she could hole up back here at the cabin until she finished the Spencer Hotels project, not venturing out until the holidays were over.
When she returned to the living room, she found Nate waiting for her just inside the door. Unfortunately, her boots were on the mat right beside where he was standing and there was no room around the furniture in the small space for her to grab them without being practically on top of him, an image she absolutely did not need racing through her head right now.
"I, um, need my boots," she said, gesturing to them.
"Oh. Right." He moved as far as he could in the other direction, but she still barely had space to squeeze past the table and grab them.
She was aware of the heat emanating from him. If there were more light in the small space, she wouldn't be surprised to see steam puffing off his coat. Was he always this warm or was it only the contrast between his body heat and the icy air inside her cabin?
She pushed away the question as completely irrelevant and focused on shoving her feet into her boots and throwing on her coat.
"Ready?" he asked, barely veiled impatience in his voice.
"As I'll ever be," she muttered.
He opened the door and the breath was snatched from her lungs by the cold and stinging snow.
"I'll take point on the way back to the house," he said, and she remembered him referring to himself as an army Ranger. She could easily see him parachuting out of an airplane over hostile territory or leading a team into a hostage situation somewhere.
"Just hold on to my coat and follow my tracks in the snow and you should be okay," he growled over the wind.
She might have thought the warning was overdramatic, maybe even intended to scare her, but the moment they stepped off the porch, the wind and snow raged even harder. She could see nothing but black with frenzied swirls of snow beyond the pale light from the lantern and the more focused beam of his flashlight.
As they began their painstaking trudge through the snow, she almost laughed when she remembered how she had thought the snow the night before was a blizzard. Compared to this, that was just a mild flurry. She could barely make out any kind of landmark in the darkness without any ambient glow from a porch light or a vapor light and what she could see was buried in snow.
She remembered reading in school once about how early pioneers were sometimes forced to run a rope between their house and barn during blizzards so they could hang on to it to safely while they made their way back and forth to take care of their livestock. Without that anchor, they could become hopelessly lost in moments and freeze to death before they found their way back home, not ever knowing they might be a few feet from their door.
She clutched the hem of Nate Cavazos's coat like it was her only lifeline, the only safe thing she had to hold on to in this surreal landscape.
At last, when her lungs were heaving from the cold and from the rapid pace the man set for them through knee-high snow, they reached the porch. He gripped her elbow to help her up the steps that hadn't yet seen a shovel and then he opened the door to the main ranch house.
Though she could still see the condensation of her breath here, blessed warmth from the fire crackling in the great room eased its steady way through the house and into her aching muscles.
Compared to the fury that lurked outside the door, it felt like the tropics in here.
She set the lantern down on the console in the hall and shook snow off her coat and took off her hat, this time a wool creation her assistant at the store knitted out of one of their custom yarns.
"Go ahead and hang your coat on one of the hooks," he said. She shrugged out of her coat and complied, aware as she did that he wasn't removing his own. Was he really going back out into that storm? she wondered. Before she could ask, though, two little dark heads peeked around the doorway.
"You're back!" Tallie exclaimed. She came into the entry with a brightly striped afghan wrapped around her shoulders. Beneath it, Emery saw she wore blue footie pajamas. Claire followed close behind with a matching afghan around her shoulders, but a plaid flannel nightgown several inches too short and fuzzy pink slippers peeking out below.
Tallie hugged her uncle, despite the clumps of snow clinging to his coat. "We thought maybe you were lost in the storm, Uncle Nate. You were gone forever."
The girl sniffled and Emery heard the deep fear in her voice. Her heart ached for this child who would probably never stop worrying she would lose someone else she loved.
For a moment, the man looked a little panicky at her tears, but after an awkward moment, he pulled her into a hug and kissed the top of her glossy hair.
"Nope. I'm right here. I just had some trouble with the generator at the cabin so I had to bring Ms. Kendall back with me before she turned into a Popsicle. It sure is blowing out there. If not for the snow and the cold, it would be a good night for flying kites."
Both girls giggled, as Emery realized he had intended. Though she wasn't inclined to like him very much right now she had to approve. His teasing hit just the right note with his two frightened nieces.
"I'm so glad you're safe," Tallie said. "And you, too, Ms. Kendall."
To her shock, the girl left her uncle's side and slid her arms around Emery's waist. She smelled of shampoo and laundry detergent with an undertone of smoke from the fireplace and Emery felt a curious tug at her heart.
"Come in by the fireplace. It's freezing out here," Claire ordered.
She followed her into the great room and wanted to just stand and bask in the heat from the fire blazing merrily in the river rock hearth.
She was struck again by how bare the room was, with that empty Christmas tree and that massive rock mantel that cried out for some sort of natural garland of pine boughs.
The room was large, with two different furniture settings, two large sofas and an easy chair that made a U shape around the fireplace and a separate sitting arrangement in one corner near the Christmas tree. Both sofas were covered in blankets that had probably been dragged from other rooms in the house.
It was a comfortable room that could be genuinely lovely with a few little touches. But that was none of her business, she thought.
"I need to go back out and check on the livestock and bring in some more logs," Nate said. "Will you all be okay in here?"
"Do you have to?" Tallie asked, a plaintive, worried note in her voice.
"Sorry, bug, but I do."
"Be careful," Claire said in the bossy tone Emery was beginning to realize was second-nature to the girl.
"I shouldn't be long," he said. "There should be plenty of wood to keep the fire going. Stay warm in here."
Though the girls looked worried after he left, they quickly shifted their attention to Emery.
"You can sleep on one of the couches," Claire said in a managing sort of voice that reinforced Emery's earlier impression that the girl was used to doing all she could to keep order in her world.
Still chilled from trekking through the snow, she sat as close as she could to the fire and wrapped a soft wool blanket around her shoulders. Tallie immediately sat beside her, only a few inches away, though the couch was broad and longer than normal.
"Will the horses be okay?" Tallie asked.
"I'm sure they'll all be fine. Horses are smart creatures and they'll head for any available shelter during the storm. Don't worry."
A particularly intense gust of wind rattled the huge picture window suddenly and the younger girl gasped and moved even closer.
"I really don't like the wind," she muttered.
"Don't be such a baby," Claire made a show of rolling her eyes, but Emery was quite certain she saw apprehension in the other girl, as well, as she sat on her other side.
"I don't like the wind, either," Emery admitted.
"But you're a grown-up."
"Sometimes grown-ups
are afraid of things too," she answered calmly. Heaven knows, she could bore them senseless with all the things that kept her up at night. "Shall I tell you a story my mother used to tell me when I was a little girl?"
"Please," Tallie begged, snuggling closer.
She settled deeper into the sofa. "The north wind and the sun one day had an argument about who was the stronger and could more easily remove a traveler's coat…"
She dragged the story out as long as she could, embellishing with several details that had never been in the original story. Then she added another and another and by the time her voice trailed off, both girls were half-asleep. Tallie stirred a little as Emery stopped speaking, but then eased back down again.
Emery closed her eyes as the fire crackled and hummed, its warmth both a physical and a mental comfort. This wasn't at all a bad way to spend a snowy night, she thought, just before she drifted off.
Chapter Four
When Nate returned to the house an hour later, exhausted and chilled to the marrow of his bones by the intense storm, he found the power still out, the fire burned down to embers and Emery and both girls sleeping on one couch.
He added another log to the fire and watched to make sure the embers would ignite it, then turned back to the sleeping females.
Emery dozed on one end, her cheek on the armrest, and both girls were cuddled together like puppies at the other.
The familiar, heavy weight of duty pressed down on his shoulders as he looked at his nieces. He loved them and had from the moment each was born, though he hadn't had much more than a distant, avuncular interest in them over the years.
That love had certainly grown in the past four months, but he had also discovered that instant fatherhood was far more terrifying than any challenge he had ever faced. Even being trapped in an Afghanistan mountain pass by a Taliban ambush and having to wait thirty-six hours for their exit transport had been easier than finding himself responsible for the emotional and physical well-being of Tallie and Claire.
It was enough to make even the most hardened of soldiers long to just pack up his gear and go AWOL.
He wouldn't. He owed his sister far too much for that, but sometimes he wondered how the hell he could survive the task ahead of him. Just thinking about them turning into teenagers and all that would come with that was enough to turn his hair gray.
Day by day, he reminded himself. That was the only way the three of them could make it through. One feeble, awkward step at a time. He just hoped to hell it would get easier.
He shifted his gaze to the other end of the couch toward his unwilling houseguest. In sleep, she was remarkably lovely, with those elegant debutante high cheekbones and that silky tangle of hair in a loose ponytail over her shoulder. His hands itched to pull it free, to bury his fingers in all that softness….
He had been far too long without a woman.
He sighed. That part of his life was in an indefinite holding pattern, much to his regret. How could he even think about women, about easing those particular appetites, when he had all these other damn plates spinning? The girls, the ranch, working out the details of Suz and John's estate?
If ever there was a woman who might make him change his mind about that, it was Emery Kendall, with that luscious mane of hair and her long, sleek legs and blue eyes that reminded him of a mountain lake on a clear, pure July afternoon.
As he watched, her long lashes fluttered and then opened. Disoriented confusion flickered in her gaze for an instant, followed quickly by alarm. He frowned. Why the hell would she be afraid of him, especially after he had risked frostbite to get her up here to the ranch house in safety?
He was only slightly appeased when she made an effort to steady her nerves. She sat up and wiped at her eyes.
"Sorry I woke you," he murmured. "I was just adding another log to the fire."
"No power yet, I guess," she whispered.
"Not yet. If lines are out around the valley, it might take the power company until morning to get out this way."
She nodded and extricated herself from the girls, who didn't even stir as Emery slid from the blankets, rearranged them, and stood silhouetted by the fire's glow.
His unruly body stirred. She definitely had curves in all the right places, something he didn't want to notice right now. He also didn't want to see how pretty and warm and slightly mussed she looked just waking up.
To his dismay, she walked nearer, probably so they could talk without disturbing the girls. Unfortunately, her proximity only intensified his awareness of the quiet intimacy here in the darkened house and the seductive scent of her, of vanilla and cinnamon and luscious, sleepy woman.
"How are the horses?" she whispered.
It took all his control not to step away from temptation. "Okay, as far as I can tell. Annabelle, one of our foaling mares, seemed a little restless but I'm sure she was just edgy about the storm. I'm afraid we're going to lose the roof on one of the hay sheds. It's metal and some of the sheets don't seem as secure as I'd like, but it's not safe in the dark and the wind for me to climb up and check."
"I should say not!" she exclaimed, slightly louder than a whisper. Claire stirred a little, but then seemed to settle back down.
He eased away from the fireplace toward the other end of the great room where they could speak slightly above a whisper. The fire's warmth reached here, though she still picked up a blanket and wrapped it around herself before she joined him.
"Were the girls all right?" he asked.
"Tallie doesn't like the wind. She was a little nervous at first, but Claire and I managed to settle her down. We told some stories and then they both fell asleep."
"I guess it was good you were here so I didn't have to leave them alone longer than necessary."
"They were worried about you."
"Yeah. They're both a little paranoid something's going to happen to me."
She was silent for a long moment and he braced himself, sensing the direction of her thoughts even before she spoke.
"What happened to their parents?" she finally asked.
He sighed, hit again by the grief for the sister he had loved. "Plane crash. John was a pilot with a share in a little Cessna in Idaho Falls. They left the girls with friends—the Daltons, actually—for a weekend so they could fly up to Glacier National Park for their anniversary. They had engine trouble on the way back and the plane lost altitude. John tried to make an emergency landing in a rainstorm, but he didn't have a clear spot and they ended up crashing into the mountains up near Helena."
He hated thinking of his sister's last moments, the terror she must have experienced as the plane went down. He was quite certain her last thoughts would have centered on what would happen to her girls. He only hoped she had somehow known he would step up, no matter how hard it might turn out to be.
He was also fully aware of the irony. He had been the special forces soldier, performing dangerous mission after dangerous mission, but it had been soft, homebody Suzi who had died so tragically and unexpectedly.
"Oh, those poor girls," Emery murmured. "No wonder Tallie is so nervous about bad weather. Where were you when it happened?"
"My third tour in the war against terror. Afghanistan, this time."
"So you came home?"
He hadn't seen any other choice. The girls had no one else. He could have sent them into foster care, but that would be a miserable way to repay the sister who had sacrificed so much to take care of him.
"I was close to the end of my commitment so I was able to work it out with the army to take the rest of the leave coming to me and get out early."
He hadn't wanted to. He had expected to make the army his career as long as they would still have him. But sometimes life threw a curveball and you either had to hit back or get cold-cocked in the face.
"May I ask you a question?" she asked after a moment.
"Shoot."
"I know it's presumptuous of me and you don't have to answer if you don't want to. It's
really none of my business. But why isn't the Christmas tree decorated? Christmas is only a week away."
He glanced at the bare tree as guilt pinched him. Here was yet another way he had failed the girls. The three of them had brought the artificial tree down from the attic the week before and put it together, fully intending to decorate the blasted thing, but that was as far as they'd gotten.
Every day he told himself he would put the lights on it, but something always came up. A problem with one of the horses, a meeting at school, this blasted endless wrangling with the attorneys executing John and Suzi's estate.
Here was just another way he was failing the girls, though they hadn't once pushed him to finish decorating the tree all week. On some level, he suspected they were struggling just as he was to find a little holiday spirit somewhere.
"It's on the list. None of us has been much in the mood for Christmas," he admitted now to Emery.
"I hear you there," she murmured.
He wondered again at her history, why she was choosing to spend the holidays hiding away here at Hope Springs. He didn't need to know, he reminded himself. She was a guest, nothing more, and he would do well to keep that in the front of his head.
"We'll get to it, though," he said. "I was thinking maybe tomorrow or Sunday."
"Good. That's very good. They're children. I'm sure I don't need to tell you, but they need a Christmas tree. Stockings. Christmas cookies. All of it."
He had tried to make cookies, but the whole thing had ended in a disaster. Just like nearly everything else he tried.
"I have no idea how to throw Christmas for a couple of girls."
He hadn't meant to confess that and he was vaguely horrified that the words slipped out.
She gazed at him for a long moment and in the flickering light from the fire, her features looked fragile and as lovely as a painting.
"I could help you. At least with the decorating part."
He stared at her, stunned into speechlessness at the offer.
A Cold Creek Holiday Page 5
